This invention relates to a method and apparatus for delivering drugs prepared in, for example, a hospital pharmacy and medical instruments such as injectors to nurse stations or operating rooms in different wards of a hospital or to different hospitals.
Carrier devices for taking articles out of a storage room and delivering them to predetermined positions by putting them in carriers are used in various industrial fields. In a hospital, especially in a big hospital, drugs prepared based on prescriptions issued by doctors are handed to patients or delivered to nurse stations in respective wards after being inspected by pharmacists. Thus, it is difficult to use the above-mentioned conventional carrier devices as drug carrier devices in hospitals.
In many hospitals, in order to eliminate the necessity for hospital pharmacists to have to walk to a drug storage room to fetch necessary drugs from the shelf, drug pouches for powdered drugs and tablets are put in buckets which run on a conveyor line installed in a pharmacy and are collected in one place. After checking if the drugs are consistent with prescriptions, they are handed to patients.
But by using an automatic injection dispenser disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication 3-69537, it is possible to prepare drugs more efficiently. The dispenser disclosed in this publication has a temporary tray storage shelf, a shelf for storing transfusion fluids, a shelf for single items, and an ampule storage shelf that are arranged in this order in a drug storage room. Each shelf has a means for discharging drugs or other drug-related articles from the shelf into a tray. Drugs and other products are discharged from the respective shelves into trays and are then sent to a predetermined place.
Examined Japanese Utility Model Publication 6-14753 discloses a device for storing and discharging small medical articles such as ampules. In this device, ampules are stored in cartridges so that they can be easily stored and taken out. Ampules can be taken out of any desired cartridge by a discharging means and put in trays. The trays are then sent to an inspecting station and then to a discharging point.
A similar device is disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication 2-28406 too.
These conventional devices have a means for collecting or selecting drugs and other medications which is provided in the feed line along which drugs and other medications taken out of a drug storage room are fed to a predetermined place in a pharmacy, and after being inspected by pharmacists, they are sent out of the pharmacy. But none of these devices has a means for delivering medications collected to a predetermined one of a plurality of wards in a hospital or to a predetermined one of a plurality of hospitals.
In most cases, drugs collected in a pharmacy and inspected by pharmacists are put in drug pouches and are physically handed to patients.
In big hospitals, drugs and non-drug articles prepared for patients are large in kinds, numbers and quantities.
While powdered drugs, tablets, liquid drugs and external drugs account for most drugs administered to outpatients, drugs administered to inpatients are much more varied in kinds, including ampules, vials, blood and other fluids for transfusion, which are used according to the instructions of doctors. Also, non-drug items such as injectors and dressings are also needed.
When necessary drugs and non-drug articles for a plurality of patients have been prepared and collected, they are checked by pharmacists or other authorized people, put in trays and sent to the respective nurse stations.
Conventional drug carrier devices make it possible to efficiently collect medications from an inspecting station. But none of them has a means for automatically sorting and delivering medications to respective nurse stations. Thus, they have to be manually sorted and delivered to nurse stations.
An object of this invention is to provide a control method for feeding medications in which processing units, which can prepare drugs, non-drug articles and drug-related articles and other items that are needed in hospitals, are provided along a carrier feed line, and in which carriers for respective patients are fed on the feed line in the order in which preparations for carriers, preparations for medications and preparation for receiving carriers are all finished so that a large amount of medications can be collected and delivered to a plurality of wards in a hospital with high efficiency.